Take over network from existing controller

[AlCalzone]

To make migration from legacy controllers easier, especially when NVM backup/restore is not an option, consider the following flow:

• Start learn mode, join existing network. As part of this, existing nodes' info is transferred to Z-Wave JS
• Ask user to turn off existing controller
• Read NVM, modify NVM to set own node ID to the node ID of the previous SUC
• Write modified NVM
• Restart to apply modified NVM
• Maybe (investigate?): Change own role to SUC/SIS

[TomMalfrere]

I'm following...
I have the following setup

• Raspberri Pi 3B+ rev1.3
• Raspian Bullseye 32bit OS
• AEOTEC Gen5 ZW090 USB controller
• z-wave-js UI in a docker
• MQTT (mosquitto) in a docker
• Domoticz (not in a docker)

I'm have issues lately with my AEOTEC Gen5 ZW090 USB-stick that becomes unresponsive after 2-3 days.
A reboot (ZWave stick remains powered and plugin) fixes the problem.

I would like to move to

• Raspberri Pi 3B+ rev1.4
• Raspian Bookworn 64bit OS
• RAZBerry
• z-wave-js UI in a docker
• MQTT (mosquitto) in a docker
• Domoticz (in a docker)

How can I replace the Z-Wave controller in my network but make sure my devices are reported the same in MQTT ?
This is a live system with 41 z-wave devices.

[AlCalzone]

If your Z-Stick is on firmware 1.2 you can just take an NVM backup and restore that on a new controller using Z-Wave JS UI.

[TomMalfrere]

If your Z-Stick is on firmware 1.2 you can just take an NVM backup and restore that on a new controller using Z-Wave JS UI.

"productLabel": "ZW090",
"productDescription": "Z‐Stick Gen5 USB Controller",
"manufacturer": "AEON Labs",
"firmwareVersion": "1.0",
"sdkVersion": "6.51.2",
"protocolVersion": 3,

[AlCalzone]

It's possible that you can upgrade with the firmware updater from Aeotec (search for Z-Stick 5 firmware 1.2).

If not then this feature would be for you.

[TomMalfrere]

I tried updating the firmware this weekend. It did not work.
It appears my stick is running since september 2017 so it was likely manufactured before 2018...

I just read : #6341
which affects me also.
I went for option 6...
I'm running for a few days now without a reboot... (normally every 2-3days)

[Hedda]

Sounds promising if can make the whole procesure user friendly all from the UI.

For reference, Home Assistant’s ZHA integation which is their native Zigbee gateway component has a succeded with the user friendly part via similar built-in UI feature for ”radio migration” that allow users to migrate from and old to a new Zigbee Coordinator adapter via a scripted backup and restore function that does everything for the user. See:

https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/zha#to-migrate-to-a-new-zigbee-coordinator-radio-inside-zha

This feature in the ZHA integration makes it super simple for any user to migrate to a new Zigbee Coordinator (radio adapter).

https://connectzbt1.home-assistant.io/migrate-zigbee-zha-only/

Users without ZHA can otherwise use zigpy-cli (which is the command-line-tool for the zibee livrary and Zigbee framework that ZHA dependsnon) to do NVM backup and restore with it as a stand-alone utility:

https://github.com/zigpy/zigpy-cli

Would be awesome if the Home Assistant’s Z-Wave JS integation and Z-Wave JS UI had similar features that made it just as easy and user-friendly to migrate to a newer Z-Wave Controller.

[Hedda]

Oh, and by the way, also for reference, both Nerivec’s ”ember-zli” and ”zigpy-cli” command line interface tools similarly convert Zigbee network backups to similar JSON representation that can be modified before restore backup from file

https://github.com/Nerivec/ember-zli

might be interesting to look at Nerivec’s ”ember-zli” because it is made for Silicon Labs Gecko Bootloader and written in TypeScript.

Perhaps might also be interesting to look at the Open Zigbee coordinator backup format for a consistant JSON representation (even if that was made for Zigbee and not Z-Wave):

https://github.com/zigpy/open-coordinator-backup

Though zigpy-cli and bellows are what is used by ZHA but those are written in Python:

https://github.com/zigpy/zigpy-cli

https://github.com/zigpy/bellows

[brandond]

I recently had to decommission an old Vera Home controller, and I think all the info necessary to take over would have been available in the backup files - but I ended up just excluding/including all the devices into a new network because I couldn't figure out how to get zwave-js to take over. This would have been great!